Ernest Graves
wanted to know whether the list had been provided to anybody. I said, "No, we're not
about to share the list with anybody until the White House approves it."
So he said, "You make sure that nobody sees the list." You see, Mondale was, of
course, very knowledgeable in the ways of Congress. Mondale, incidentally, from his
time as a senator from Minnesota had been a great proponent of various water works,
such as flood control and navigation.
Minnesota has some very important water resources. So Mondale knew the issues very
well. And he was definitely in a mood to limit the damage from this thing. He knew, of
course, that since President Carter had launched this, it had to be carried through to
some, hopefully beneficial, conclusion.
The President couldn't abandon the thing. He'd been in office for only two months. He
couldn't just say, "My first major public effort was a stupid thing; I'm abandoning it."
It was stupid, but he couldn't say that.
But Mondale wanted to limit damage. So the list of 51 never saw the light of day. We
went on, and later there was a list of about 20 that were marked for trouble. Most of
them went ahead. Only a few projects fell by the way, as a result of this whole thing.
Q:
So he made his public statement, I guess?
A:
Well, I suppose so. I'm not knowledgeable enough to pontificate on the subject of
President Carter's difficulties.
He had an uncanny sense for the views of certain groups, but a remarkable lack of grasp
of the overall picture. In the case of this water project thing, he certainly struck a
responsive chord with the environmental groups and the opponents of the projects. But
he didn't have a good perspective on the overall situation, and, least of all, the fact that
the majority of Congress felt that this type of public works was very beneficial to the
United States.
Q:
Since you mentioned Minnesota, and, of course, the Vice President was from
Minnesota, I guess that's kind of a microcosm there of the whole issue. Minnesota
depends very much on its water resources for commerce to get its farm products to
market. And it has its two major ports, Duluth and the Twin Cities. And yet Minnesota
has a very active environmental group. You wind up working with a state that is for
water resources development and a state that is for environmental protection. It must
be very hard to deal with that.
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